‘Mind? Keithy boy, I can always take a bit of ego massage. Why don’t we get you a drink, and you can tell us how fucking great we are.’
Kate watched as Connor guided Keith towards a crate of Beck’s, only just able to reach around the big man’s shoulders. Keith was an ex of Kate’s, one of those early uni experiences that was as much about getting laid by someone seemingly exotic as it was anything else, for both of them. For Kate, after a childhood fumbling around in Arbroath with underfed boys, the affluence and self-confidence of Keith was utterly alien, as was his thoroughly toned, muscular body. To Keith’s eyes, used to a parade of perfectly manicured and curved blonde types, this tall, dark, sinewy and intelligent Scottish girl with a mind of her own was as fresh as a North Sea breeze. All too quickly, though, the exotic became normal, and there simply wasn’t enough there after the lust to keep things going, and the relationship petered out after a few short months. These days Keith was doing well for himself, designing software part-time for a marine research centre down the East Neuk coast while trying to finish a computing PhD, and the two had stayed friends after uni, somewhat to the surprise of them both.
‘What did you make of the show, then?’ said Hannah, approaching Kate with two beers and handing her one.
‘Wasn’t exactly our kind of crowd, was it?’
‘That’s putting it mildly. Still, I think we played OK.’
‘Yeah, apart from laughing boy over there, winding everyone up.’
‘Can’t really blame him, the reaction we were getting.’
‘Maybe.’ Something occurred to Kate. ‘Where’s Danny?’
‘Dunno, I saw him with Paul a few minutes ago.’ A mischievous look came over Hannah’s face. ‘Why? You missing him already?’
Kate looked at Hannah and realised she knew.
‘He told you?’
‘I weaselled it out of him.’
‘How much?’
‘Everything.’
‘Nice try. How much?’
‘Just that the two of you snogged the other night.’
‘Last two nights, actually.’
‘Wow. Two nights on the trot, eh? That’s serious.’
Hannah was laughing as Kate shoved her gently on the shoulder.
Kate started laughing, too.
‘It is not serious.’
‘I’m only winding you up.’
‘Well don’t. I’ve no idea where this is going, or where it’s come from, but…’
Kate tailed off, not knowing what else to say.
‘Funny, that’s almost exactly what Danny said about it,’ said Hannah.
‘Really? I don’t want to sound like a silly schoolgirl, but what else did he say?’
Hannah smiled. ‘Just that he really liked you, that’s all. And that you were taking it easy.’
Kate smiled too, downed some of her beer and looked round the room again. Connor and Keith were in cahoots over in a corner. Hannah followed her gaze.
‘He’s pretty fit,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘Keith. In that buffed-up, posh kind of way.’
‘Yeah,’ said Kate. ‘A bit too buffed-up and posh, in the end.’
‘I know what you mean. I prefer the scrawny Scottish indie-boy look,’ said Hannah, laughing again.
‘I’m more of a big, hairy Irish teddy bear girl myself,’ said Kate, joining in.
‘Christ,’ said Hannah, as the two of them leant on each other and laughed. After a moment something occurred to Kate.
‘Does Connor know?’
‘No. But you should tell him.’
‘I will,’ said Kate, ‘it’s just that we don’t really know where we’re at yet, so there might not be anything to tell.’
‘That’s what Danny said, sounds like you two are made for each other. You’ll be finishing each other’s sentences next, and wearing matching outfits. Seriously, though, you should tell Con.’
‘I will,’ said Kate. ‘Honest.’
Paul bustled in with Danny ambling behind.
‘Fucking Ents Committee or whatever they’re called aren’t happy,’ he said. ‘Reckon you were inciting racial hatred, Con. They say it was offensive and they’re talking about not paying us.’
‘Racial hatred?’ said Connor. ‘Fuck off. I was just letting off steam. How the fuck can they not pay us? Bunch of inbred yah eejits.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll sort it, but it might be best if we get the gear out of here sooner rather than later.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Connor, his eccy high long gone. ‘Fine.’ He gulped down the best part of a bottle of Beck’s and headed towards the door. ‘Let’s just shift the stuff and get the fuck out of here to a proper pub.’
Within fifteen minutes the gear was loaded. The band and Keith hung about in the corridor by the emergency exit waiting for Paul to get back with the money. Half a dozen students came out the entrance of the performance hall into the strip-lit corridor in a flurry of laughs and swearing. One of them spotted Connor.
‘Hey, it’s that lippy little twat with the chip on his shoulder,’ he said. ‘What’s your problem, Jock?’
‘Leave it, Tom,’ said another one. It was one of the guys Kate and Danny had played pool with. ‘They’re all right. Let’s just go.’
‘Hang on. Let’s see what this guy has to say when he’s not onstage. What have you got to say for yourself, Jock?’
‘How about fuck off, poof? Something like that?’
‘Poof, is it? How about I treat one of these lovely ladies to a proper English shagging, show you I’m not a poof?’
Connor lunged at the guy and ran straight into a right hook. He didn’t think it was so easy to be knocked off your feet by a punch, but he found himself on the floor and felt dizzy. The guy stood over him.
‘Next time, try not fighting like a girl, as well as shagging like one, eh, Jock?’
The guy from the pool game pulled him away, and they headed off down the corridor towards the main bar. Connor had blood streaming from his nose and the cut on his lip had opened up again. He felt something in his mouth and spat a tooth into his hand.
‘Think the tooth fairy will find me in this dump?’ he said as Danny and Keith helped him to his feet. ‘We could probably do with the money if we’re not getting paid.’
Paul came round the corner waving a pile of notes at them and saw Connor’s face.
‘It seems like I’m always saying this, but what the fuck happened to you?’
Connor just looked at him, felt round his mouth with his tongue and spat blood on the floor.
‘Look,’ said Keith, ‘I know a decent pub round the corner. Why don’t we get out of here.’
‘You’re my kind of guy, Keithy boy,’ said Connor. ‘Despite your upbringing.’ He laughed but nobody joined in. They all just looked at him. ‘Come on, the pub waits for no man. Or woman.’
He looked pointedly at Kate and Hannah but they both just strode out the emergency exit into the night.
The six of them clattered out of Aikman’s at midnight. The rain had stopped and the wind had given up. Keith suggested a walk along the beach so they stocked up on booze from the van and headed towards the West Sands. The path to the beach went straight across the eighteenth fairway of the Old Course. Danny and Paul pulled branches off a tree and swung them like golfers up the fairway towards the clubhouse shouting ‘fore’. Up ahead Kate and Hannah were chatting, while Connor brought up the rear with Keith.
‘So what is it you’ve got against us English?’ asked Keith, smiling.
‘It’s not the English people,’ said Connor, pointing a finger. ‘It’s not you. It’s the arrogant, self-important Englishness we constantly get shoved down our throats on television, in the papers, in films and books. Scotland’s such a half-arsed country that most of our media is made in London for an English audience, and the handful of garbage we do produce ourselves is even worse. But it’s either that or the morally superior crap from down south, continually r
ubbing our noses in how fucking inept we are.’
‘It sounds like you’ve got a problem with Scotland, not England.’
‘You’re not the first person to say that.’
‘So what are you going to do about it?’
‘Change. Find a new Scotland. Invent a better country. It’s that easy. Other fuckers do it all the time. Look at those Scandinavian bastards, they’re always so bang up to date, all shiny and liberal and open-minded. Makes you sick. I reckon it would be cool to be Swedish. Or Icelandic. Look at Björk, she’s fantastic. Now there’s a true original who does what she likes and doesn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks. Who have we got in comparison? Sharleen Spiteri or Simple Minds? Jesus.’
By now they were on the beach. The long expanse of the West Sands looked like a ruffled amber tablecloth in the spilt light of the town. Only the white noise of the waves could be heard. Paul and Danny had caught up with the girls and Connor looked at them, then at the distant, twinkling lights of Carnoustie across the water.
‘Did you know this is where they filmed that scene in Chariots of Fire?’ said Keith. ‘The slo-mo running at the start.’
Connor looked around, but in the semi-darkness he couldn’t make the connection.
‘Really?’ he said. ‘I suppose there must be hundreds of places in Scotland that appear in films, eh? Except not in Braveheart, of course.’
That ridiculous film was probably the most famous piece of Scottish history in the world, thought Connor, and yet it was inaccurate, jingoistic drivel, starred an Aussie and was filmed in Ireland as a tax dodge. Classic. He’d read that they’d erected a William Wallace statue somewhere that looked like Mel Gibson. Christ Almighty.
The others had stopped. When Connor and Keith caught up they were standing around a dark, oily mass laid out on the sand. Danny handed Connor a joint and tipped the body over with his boot.
‘Dead seal,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t look as if it’s been here long either, there’s no decay.’
In the dark they couldn’t make out much, only the glassy eyes and oily skin now half-covered in sand. The eyes seemed full of tears, and Connor couldn’t pull his gaze away. He felt the joint top up his level of stonedness, which was combining with the smacky aftermath of what had turned out to be a pretty dodgy E. In turn, the alcohol was taking the edge off the stoned feeling, and the speed was sharpening up the boozy fuzz. On top of it all he’d snicked a couple of Feminax off Kate for the pain in his mouth and this bloody headache, and they were starting to ooze through him. Just another night in the drug cocktail cabinet of his body.
‘Should we do something? Tell someone?’ said Kate.
‘No point,’ said Keith. ‘They get washed up here quite regularly this time of year. Something to do with homing instinct gone wrong or the changing tides. Someone will find it in the morning and call it in.’
They stood looking at the body of the seal for a long time, passing the joint and then another between them. Connor wondered what kind of God gave animals instincts that would end up killing them. Did He change the currents and the tides to fuck with them? Or was it all chance?
They turned and headed back to town, wrapped up in their own thoughts. At Keith’s flat, a trendy and expensive one-bedroom place with a massive living room, they drank and smoked some more, gradually winding down and dropping off to sleep, until only Connor was left awake at eight in the morning, the first hints of a lightening dawn sky out the window.
He was a mess. His vision was blurry and his eyelids drooped as his gaze switched from out the window to the joint in his hand, which had gone out. Packed too tight, he thought as he searched for a lighter. He looked around the room. This living room was about the size of the whole flat he shared with Hannah and Danny. In the corner was a state-of-the-art hi-fi, which was making noises like angels talking to whales or something, as far as he could make out. Out of the fog of his brain he eventually recognised it as Sigur Rós. He smiled. In the other corner of the room, a surprisingly small television was on with the sound muted. It was already showing breakfast programmes, the news and markets for the early riser. Or the late sleeper, in his case. As he tried to focus on it he thought he saw something he recognised. It was footage of Edinburgh, somewhere quite posh-looking, perhaps near his Marchmont flat. Then there was a face on screen, and Connor seemed to wake up a little. He shook his head from side to side to focus his eyes on the screen, but it was swirling in front of him as he reached for his whisky and sucked on the remains of the joint. The face looked familiar, definitely someone he knew, or that he’d at least seen before. But where? His scrambled brain couldn’t work it out, and he hunted about the sofa looking for the remote to turn the sound up. But just as quickly as it had appeared, the face was gone,replaced by the inane smiling, prim, air-brushed do-goody features of a BBC breakfast presenter. Shit. What the hell was that all about? He would have to try and remember this in the morning. Wait a minute, it was already morning. And he needed to sleep. God, he was tired. He was already struggling to remember what the face looked like. Thin, pale, young – a teenager, maybe. It was a boy, wasn’t it? He thought so, but he wasn’t even sure of that now. A girlish boy? Or a boyish girl? Jesus, he had to get to bed. He’d worry about it in the morning. But it was already morning. Shit, hadn’t he already been through this?
Eventually he fell asleep where he sat, and dreamt fitfully about swimming in the sea, followed by vacant-eyed, androgynous seallike corpses with vaguely familiar faces, who disappeared whenever he turned round. He woke two hours later, before anyone else was up, had three painkillers, the remains of the joint and a hit of gin and tonic for breakfast.
It was Tuesday. Next stop Dundee.
4
Dundee
‘All we need is whisky to drink
A fire in the grate
And a roof that doesn’t leak’
The Ossians, ‘A Roof That Doesn’t Leak’
The Tay was a useless river, too shallow for ships, large spreads of sandbank appearing at low tide. The road and rail bridges hugged close to the slapping, silty water as if trying to pretend they weren’t bridges at all but causeways.
The Ossians drove over the river gazing at the rail bridge curving towards them, no hint of the ghosts that haunted it from its predecessor’s collapse almost a hundred and thirty years ago. The leaden sky above was sullen and huffy, as if it would rip apart and piss down on them any minute. They felt a strong westerly rock the van, Paul angling the steering wheel into it.
Hannah and Kate sat up front with Paul, Connor skinning up behind them and Danny reading a newspaper. Connor had filled a large lemonade bottle with gin and tonic, which he’d liberated from Keith’s drinks cabinet before the rest were awake. He swigged it occasionally and the others pretended not to notice because they couldn’t be bothered getting into it.
Danny laughed. ‘It says here that Britain’s about to be hit by the remains of an American hurricane called Hannah.’
‘Really?’ said Connor, his head twitching up from the arrangement of fag papers. ‘That’s a good omen. What do you think, love? You feel like laying waste to the country, leaving death and destruction in your wake?’
‘Yeah, why not?’ said Hannah. ‘Nothing better to do. Is this one of the cool hundred-mile-an-hour hurricanes, or just a jumped-up rain shower?’
‘It’s died down over the Atlantic. Caused a lot of damage up the eastern seaboard but a lot weaker now. Should still blow over the odd tree, though.’
‘Sounds about right,’ said Connor. ‘By the time we get it, it’s diluted and boring, yet everyone’ll still make a massive fuss about it. Especially if it’s anywhere near London. You know what a fuss they make in bloody Hampstead, every time the BBC pundits can’t get into work for a bit of a breeze. Arseholes. Every time it snows they cancel all the programmes and moan about it. It’s just a bit of fucking snow, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I hate to interrupt your bullshit, but the last thing we n
eed on this tour is snow,’ said Paul. ‘Remember we’re heading into some remote places with shitty roads and we don’t want to get stranded.’
‘It’ll be fine,’ said Connor. ‘They’re used to snow up north.’
‘Yeah, they stay indoors, that’s how they deal with it.’
In front of them lay Dundee in all its ugly office-block glory. An array of boxy grey and brown buildings were strewn across the town centre, with high-rise flats arranged at sporadic intervals further up the hillside. Above them rose the Law Hill, its stone war monument dominated by the radio repeater station behind it, towering testaments to the past and present.
‘Wasn’t it up Dundee Law that Billy Connolly recited that shite poetry on his show?’ said Danny.
Connor sparked up the joint and swigged more gin and tonic. ‘Yeah, William McGonagall,’ he said, becoming animated. ‘Reputedly the worst poet in the world. His Tay Bridge Disaster fucking rules, by the way.’
He started waving his arms about dramatically and tried to stand up as the van lurched forwards. He tumbled into Danny and took another toke.
‘Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay! Alas! I am very sorry to say, That ninety lives have been taken away, On the last Sabbath day of 1879, Which will be remember’d for a very long time.’
He sat down with a bump as Paul accelerated away from the bridge and Kate laughed.
‘That is brutal,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should have called ourselves The McGonagalls instead of The Ossians.’
‘What are you saying about my lyrics, exactly?’ said Connor.
They drove past the Discovery, Captain Scott’s ship that a canny tourist office had used to rebrand the city. A tiny Christmas tree sat on the prow of the ship, dwarfed by the vessel’s elaborate rigging and three masts.
‘The city of discovery, eh?’ said Connor as they headed away from the river. He passed the joint to Danny and took another hit from his bottle.
The gig was in the basement of Drouthy Neebors, a pub opposite the art college on Perth Road. One of a chain of Scottish theme pubs, it was named after a line in Robert Burns’ ‘Tam O’Shanter’, but that’s where the poetic tendencies of the place ended. Nevertheless it was a tight wee live venue with a decent reputation.
The Ossians Page 7
